Healing Garalon as a Holy Paladin

I interrupt my sequence of Holy Paladin Guide posts to whip out a boss healing strat. You see, since my last post, a number of people have sent me healing logs to look at (which is totally fine, I love analyzing logs, they make me happy) and too often the healing strat used on Garalon has made me yell out “NOOOOOOOOOooooooOOOOO!”

I’ve yet to try the fight on 10, but my instinct would say have the Holy Paladin on Kiters and Tanks and the second (and third, if applicable) healer on the entire raid.

Why a Holy Pally to heal Kiters?

So far, Garalon is my absolute favorite fight to heal. The mechanics of a kiter taking huge amounts of damage and two tanks taking sporadic damage play into our strengths with so much precision that it’s almost as if the fight itself were designed to pay tribute to our class.

My guild at the time first tried using a Druid on the Kiters (where they got THAT idea, I have not a clue). It was quite disastrous, with both the Kiter and the Druid dying frequently. Then I started pitching in despite being assigned to the tanks (I’m a pally dammit, I can handle a Kiter and two tanks). While I wasn’t even the official Kiter healer, I still ended up doing most of the healing. By next raid I was begging to be the official Kiter healer. Garalon bit the dust a few attempts later.

With a proper healing technique, keeping the Kiters alive (while still doing significant healing on the tanks) is totally possible, and actually pretty easy. Which is why I encourage you Holy Pallies out there to campaign for your right to heal Garalon kiters.

Recommended Talents and Glyphs

Level 15: Doesn’t matterLevel 30: Doesn’t matterLevel 45:Eternal Flame (if you are healing the kiters, don’t even try anything else)Level 60:Unbreakable Spirit or Clemency (Purity won’t work on this fight. I tend to side with Clemency because Hand of Sacrifice is so good here, but there could be use for US as well.)Level 75:Divine Purpose (any could work here, but there will be a lot of use for Divine Purpose)Level 90: Light’s Hammer if you want an AoE or Execution Sentence if you want to boost your single target healing (I originally thought Holy Prism cast on the boss every 20 seconds would do a lot more healing overall, but testing revealed otherwise.)

Assuming Garalon will be moving in a clockwise position, stand to the right of his front right leg.

In this position, you should be in range of the Kiter and both tanks and close enough to melee for mana (and Battle Healer) on the front right leg. You can possibly reach Garalon himself. As our big bug turns, keeping a proper position should only take minimal movement, giving you plenty of time to cast to your little heart’s content.

Pre-Pull Prep

Have a Beacon of Light on your first Kiter (generally this will be one of your tanks). If you have time, get a maxed out Mastery bubble on your Beacon target, then toss a 3 Holy Power Eternal Flame on them to keep your Mastery from falling off.

If your guild takes forever to pull, use that time to put maxed out Mastery bubbles with 3 Holy Power Eternal Flames on both tanks.

If you still haven’t pulled yet, dump Eternal Flame on yourself, then on everyone else.

During the Fight

Keep Beacon on the current Kiter. Have 3 Holy Power Eternal Flames rolling on the Kiter and both tanks. If you have some wiggle-room, get an Eternal Flame up on yourself. If you’re bored, put as many Eternal Flames as you can on people in range, but be careful to not let it fall off the Kiter or the tanks.

To build up Holy Power, use Holy Shock on CD. You should be in range of the front right leg (and sometimes of the boss) so you can use Crusader Strike too. There’s a lot of raid damage going on so Holy Radiance is never a waste (use it on a non-tank, non-kiting melee if possible) but it can use up your mana bar pretty fast. And since your Kiter will be taking a lot of damage, a Divine Light will also be helpful to charge your Holy Power.

Hand of Sacrifice is to be used a lot on this fight. You can choose to use it on cooldown, or time it to help out on Kiter transitions. (When I was learning the fight, we had a Warlock who was squishier than the rest. I always made sure I timed my Sacrifice for it to be available to keep him alive during his transitions.)

Handling Transitions

Watch the stacks on the Kiter. When it is almost time to change Kiters (most guilds aim for a transition at 20 stacks, in which case you’d begin your process at about 16 stacks), get a 3 Holy Power Eternal Flame on the receiving Kiter, and transfer your Beacon. Make sure Eternal Flame doesn’t fall off your original Kiter until the transition is completely over and they are safely back in range of the raid healers.

By the time the new Kiter gets his first stack of Pungency, he should have Beacon and a 3 HP Eternal Flame on him.

If a transition is difficult, time your Hand of Sacrifice and Aura Mastery to be available for it.

Keeping yourself alive

If you are positioned right, you should in be in range of the raid healers. But to help them out, keep an Eternal Flame going on yourself whenever you can, and use Divine Shield and Divine Protection whenever they’re off CD.

Staying alive should be easy.

Now go out to play!

Like any fight use your CDs right and use them often, follow the strat and you should have a blast on Garalon!EDIT: I made some changes to the post in light of some of the points raised in the comments. Huge thanks to everyone who left some input. It’s players like you guys who make it so much fun to be a holy pally.

22 Comments on “Healing Garalon as a Holy Paladin”

Sadly I haven’t done Garalon on normal yet, but if I recall correctly, if you’re going to use Holy Prism make sure you target the leg that the DPS are targetting and not the boss, otherwise you’re likely to do 0 healing overall due to how far away from the body the raid should be (unless your raiders hate your healers but love Paramore. Crush, Crush, Crush).

With the amount of movement in that fight, I’d second your questioning the use of Light’s Hammer. Execution Sentence/Stay of Execution might actually be a better use of the final talent tree, and use it along with Hand of Sacrifice to ensure a smoother transition – maybe Stay of Execution the current kiter along with Eternal Flame ticks while you set up the new kiter?

Target Garalon with Holy Prism should work since there should be at least 5 people within 15 yards of his melee range. He is melee-able, you just don’t want to get underneath him. If the legs are up, it does make more sense to target the legs, half because people will be closer and half because you want the legs to die first.

Stay of Execution is a good option as well if you’re having trouble keeping your kiter alive (which you shouldn’t have), I’m just not a fan of the spell since I already have a ton of single target heals and I’d like to help out the raid healers when I can.

There we are. Seems that some of the folks over at Elitist Jerks have tried Holy Prism on Garalon’s body and found it just doesn’t reach people away from the body (keeping in mind it’s 15 yards from a specific point on the model rather than the hit box, if I recall correctly). Now I want to go try this in LFR myself just to double-check…

Stay of Execution is an OK way to auto-heal a kiter, tank, or yourself. Light’s Hammer is a good way to help out the raid healers in 25m because they should all be in a pretty stack somewhere.

Beacon is the real reason Paladins should heal the kiter. There will be many times when you are more than 40y from the kiter, particularly in the corners, and it is much easier to heal when you can move further ahead of the boss. Most of your time will be spent casting Holy Light, Shock, and EF.

Also, the only reason some players seem squishier than others: they’re standing in the puddles. All kiters need to avoid puddles, particularly at hand-off when they are stunned by Crush but puddles continue to spawn.

I actually found that I was very rarely further than 40 yards away (and when it did happen, it would only take me a second to reposition myself), but even at that, I agree that Beacon is the determining factor. Whenever I have to stop healing for whatever reason, the EF from the tanks (and everyone else) ensured that our Kiter wouldn’t notice.

Our best on Garalon 10 is now 1.7% , sigh at hard enrages that just kill you all. We have found 3 healing and healers kiting and 2 healing and dps kiting to be roughly the same. 3 healing feels a lot smoother but its possible either way Sadly with xmas coming we won’t have our best group for the next couple of weeks.

With healers kiting you can’t really assign targets instead you rotate your duties as you progress through, each healer heals themself, another healer heals them and the tanks and the 3rd healer hangs out the back.

I tried holy prism the last few attempts instead of my normal lights hammer but it was not a success. OK ideally I through it on a leg in melee range. Ok I am kiting, ‘Must be facing target”,I just came off, or are about to start kiting, range issues. No nearby leg, OK throw it on the body and heal virtually nobody. Let alone the relatively short cooldown means arghh its off cool down where can i use it.

Unfortunately, I haven’t done the fight on 10 at all, so I’m not too familiar with the differences. I’m not sure why you can’t have assignments though. The assignments couldn’t be as rigid as on 25, but you could have one healer mostly on the Kiter/tanks and the other on raid, helping each other out as it goes.

I’ve heard of using healers as kiters but I’ve never tried it myself. It seems more logical to have tanks and ranged dps do it.

If your raids is having distance issues, then maybe Stay of Execution might be the best Level 90 talent for you. I’m not usually a fan of that talent since I have enough single-target power and am lacking in AoE healing, but when AoE healing isn’t an option, slapping a Stay of Execution on the kiter might be your best option.

But but but my favorite thing on this fight in LFR is to kite the pheromones!! What will I do??

Nice guide though, it looks like a solid strategy! With the heavy focus on 3HP Eternal Flames, have you looked at the PVP 4pc set? (cast a 3HP Word of Glory/Eternal Flame, get 1HP back instantly). I’ve read a lot of glowing praise for the PVP set on EJ but haven’t really seen it discussed much elsewhere – this seems like an ideal fight for it!

The PvP 4pc was actually used by pretty much all the really high end holy pallies until 5.1. I haven’t been spying on pallies much since then so I don’t know if it’s still the case, though EJ does report the PvP set still having its utility. I’m not hardcore enough to invest in a PvP set myself, but if others want to, it’s a totally acceptable practice!

This strat doesn’t really apply to LFR so you’re safe! I tried a little bit, but with pheromones and Pungency all over the place, you can do pretty much whatever you want in LFR, haha.

Oh, I meant I like kiting in LFR because that way I can at least ensure pheromone pools WON’T end up all over the place, haha. I was looking forward to doing it in 10man when we reach him, but I guess now I’ll have to follow your intelligent strat and do it PROPERLY, sigh. 😉

I don’t think of Battle Healer as a Holy glyph and you should never use Crusader Strike (at 9K mana and it needs a hit to generate Holy Power). Unfortunately the powers that be only give us spell hit, so we are at a full 15% chance to miss or be dodged. Battle Healer seems to be there to let a tank help out with raid heals, it will never be worth it for Holy, just not enough chance to do melee damage – especially with that miss chance. Everything else is really sound (I’d add the Eternal Flame HoT as something that needs to be tracked along with the debuffs). Glyph of Divine Plea or the Lay on Hands mana return glyph are better third choices.

Eternal Flame should always be tracked. I didn’t include it because it isn’t fight specific.

I like the Battle Healer glyph on high raid damage fights where I can stand close enough to the boss to melee. It doesn’t do a whole lot of healing, but if I’m going to be swinging for some mana back, it’s nice little bonus. Crusader Strike is only 15% of mana as opposed to Holy Shock’s 16% and Holy Radiance’s 36%. In a perfect world, I’d use Divine Lights on my target/Holy Shock/Holy Radiance, but if I need to save mana and I’m swinging at the boss anyway, I will use Crusader Strike.

Glyph on Lay on Hands is indeed always a good option. I really hate Glyph of Divine Plea, though. It might not be as bad anymore now than I’m geared enough for EF to cover the break in healing, but early on in the expansion that Glyph Divine Plea gave me so many ulcers that I dumped it in the garbage and never looked back!

I looked into Battle Healer and yeah, you’re right, unless you’re really doing a lot of melee, the healing is neglectable. Glyph of Divinity is probably a better use of that slot. Will update the post.

Great post Ophelie 🙂 I heal very similar to how you’ve outlined with the exception of Pre-healing next kiter with an Execution Sentence in addition to Eternal Flame. I love healing and moving on this fight, one of my favorites. Got this bug on farm status 🙂

Kite healer is totally a disc priest job. I let our Holy Pally (also our healing officer) cover for me when we complete the first lap so I can Mana Hymn/Focus Pot, and he’s begging for me to take it back by the 2nd crush. Guess not everybody can heal & move….

I don’t get why everyone says “heal and move”. I only had to move a tiny bit during the hours OE worked on Garalon, no more than most WoW fights. And Mastery combined with Eternal Flame and Beacon is more than enough to cover during those periods.